LOSE YOUR BORING LUNCH
Reclaim your midday meal with some modern ideas
Lunch is a neglected meal and the designers of Canada’s Food Guide would approve a new book that urges us to pay more attention to it.
Modern Lunch, by London food writer and blogger Allison Day (Appetite by Random House, $29.95) offers more than 100 home-cooked lunches ranging from a brown bag at your desk to a sit-down with friends.
“Lunch is a meal that needs a fresh coat of paint,” she writes in this inspiring and beautiful book.
Fresh fruit and vegetables are the stars, although she offers plenty of ideas for meat and fish. Some of the most interesting recipes are for salads or soups and stews; one of her suggestions in her “reclamation of lunch” is to scrap sandwiches.
Day, who blogs at Yummy Beet, suggests forming a lunch club that rotates the cooking and meets once a week or month.
Cook batches of lunch foods on the weekend, she suggests. Symbols indicate if a recipe is packable, make-ahead, needs reheating or may be frozen.
As an alternative to this recipe, Day suggests replacing the shrimp with thin slices of medium-rare steak.
CITRUS, SHRIMP AND QUINOA SALAD
Serves: 4
2 cups (500 ml) water
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1 cup (250 ml) uncooked quinoa 16 medium shrimp, peeled, deveined
2 tbsp (30 ml) extra-virgin olive oil
1/2 tsp (2.5 ml) salt
1/8 tsp (0.5 ml) chipotle chili powder or smoked paprika 2 grapefruit, in segments or chunks
4 clementines or oranges, in segments
4 oz (114 g) or 1/2 cup (125 ml) feta, crumbled
12 Moroccan dry-cured or kalamata olives, pitted, chopped 1 lime, sliced
1. Preheat oven to 425 F (220 C). In a medium saucepan, combine water and quinoa. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat. Reduce heat to low, cover and simmer for 15 minutes. Remove from heat and let stand, covered, for five minutes. Uncover, fluff with a fork and transfer to a large bowl.
2. Using a large, rimmed baking sheet, toss shrimp with the oil, salt and chipotle powder. Roast in preheated oven for 7-10 minutes or until shrimp turn bright pink.
3. Add shrimp to the bowl with the quinoa. Then add the grapefruit, clementine, feta and olives, tossing gently to combine.
4. To serve at once, divide salad between four plates or bowls and top with lime slices.
5. To go, spoon a portion of the salad into a container with a lid. Top with some lime slices, cover and refrigerate until you are ready to leave. At your destination, keep chilled in a refrigerator or cooler pack until lunchtime. To serve, season with lime.